Also in Opinion

Subscribe to The Dispatch

Already a subscriber?
Enroll in EZPay and get a free gift!
Enroll now.

Sunday June 2, 2013 6:52 AM

I can’t shake this premonition that JobsOhio is a scandal waiting to happen.

Despite the best and honorable intentions of Gov. John Kasich, I have felt that way since the
day he unveiled his concept for the privatized jobs-development agency during the 2010
campaign.

Heaven hope a scandal never materializes, but all of the combustible elements are assembled in
JobsOhio: $100 million annually in taxpayer money converted for private use; little public
accountability on how it is spent; corporations, businesses and their lobbyists lining up with
hands out; a governor needing to raise $20-plus million for his re-election.

The environment is ripe for mischief. There is every reason to believe Kasich won’t let that
happen, because he has no tolerance for wrongdoing.

But governors sometimes lose control of their best intentions, particularly when there are gobs
of money to be had or when “friends” want to help them get re-elected. Each of the four governors I
covered before Kasich endured scandals abetted, and sometimes perpetrated, by people who thought
they were helping. The late Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes often said that it wasn’t his enemies
he worried would get him in trouble; it was his friends.

When it comes to assuring the integrity of JobsOhio, Kasich ill-advisedly has cut out the one
friend — likely now a former friend — best positioned to keep him out of trouble: state Auditor
Dave Yost, a fellow Republican. At Kasich’s behest, the GOP-controlled legislature raced to approve
a bill to prohibit Yost from auditing JobsOhio’s books.

The measure was conceived without Yost’s knowledge, even though he had negotiated for months
with the Kasich administration, JobsOhio and GOP lawmakers about his desire to audit the nonprofit
corporation. The corporation has taken over most of the state’s economic-development efforts with
funding from a long-term lease on the state’s liquor profits.

In less than 24 hours, the bill was headed for Kasich’s desk on Thursday, after being added by
amendment by a House committee to a noncontroversial bill and approved by the House and Senate
largely on party-line votes. Yost barely had time to react and seemed resigned to the irrevocable
course of action, texting me this response,
Les jeux sontfaits!

Yost had been set up. While he was informed about the amendment to block him from auditing
JobsOhio shortly before the House committee took it up, business-backers had been alerted to be
ready with supporting testimony. After Marty McGann of the Greater Cleveland Partnership expressed
concern to the House committee that Yost might assert authority to snoop into the books of private
businesses, Rep. Kathleen Clyde, D-Kent, sarcastically said, “Good job pulling your testimony
together so fast.”

In a March interview with
The Dispatch, Yost said he had no intention of fishing through the books of companies
receiving money from JobsOhio, although state law already gives him the authority to audit private
institutions that receive public money.

At issue is whether the profit Ohio makes from its monopoly on liquor sales is public or
private. The bill passed Thursday makes that money private, subject to audit by a private firm.
Yost continually has argued that the money is public and, therefore, subject to audit by his
office.

“I call it quasi-private money because the connection to the public money is so great it
warrants it being treated as public money,” Yost said in March. He warned last week that the bill’s
“new definition of ‘public money’ is untested and begs further consideration.”

Allowing Yost to audit JobsOhio would provide Ohioans — and Kasich — with an extra layer of
comfort and protection from any mischief. Yost has made clear that he has high regard for Kasich’s
integrity.

But, he said in March: “What about the future, when the guy who’s not acting in good faith
sneaks his way into the tent? Controls and laws are not designed for the virtuous; they’re designed
for the tempted, and there’s $100 million worth of temptation over there.”